Family Briefs

I’ve had laryngitis at least 3 or 4 times since last summer, and I’m struggling with a bout of it again. What are you supposed to do when you’re a mom and you’re sick? You can’t write down your requests to your children because only one of them reads and he ignores my verbal requests already (why add insult to injury). You can’t use sign language (aside from the fact that you don’t know sign language, they wouldn’t understand it and probably wouldn’t “listen” anyway).

One trick I found that actually has worked best this time is to whisper. Oh man! You wouldn’t believe how much quieter things have been (I may not ever “re-gain” my voice - it might even help me resolve my yelling problem). If I whisper - they have to be quiet enough to hear me (and I won’t repeat myself but once). And my too-loud-3-year-old actually whispers back if I whisper to her. Now, why didn’t I think of whispering to her months ago instead of telling her to shut-up!

But, when it came to story-time, I just didn’t (cough, cough) think I could (cough, cough) whisper through (cough, cough) a half dozen stories since I felt like I was drowning in my own phlegm! Hubby was out of town, and I hated to ask my oldest because he was coughing too. Then I remembered something that had been handed down to us by my sister-in-law. We’ve used them on-and-off over the years - do you remember these? The Disney Read-Along books were the perfect solution tonight!

The four of us cuddled around the tape player in the boys’ room and listened to “Lady and the Tramp” (a Disney classic), “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie,” (by Laura Joffe Numeroff) and “Green Eggs and Ham” (by Dr. Suess). (Which reminded me that when my 5-year-old was 2, we had to read him this book several times a day - where was the tape then? He is our pickiest eater today . . . mmmmmm.)

We got off to a bumpy start, especially with my 3-year-old. A cassette isn’t quite as easy to stop and ask questions with, and asking questions causes everyone to miss part of the story (and older sibling brothers who know the story by heart really get angry when they miss the story). I stopped the tape, explained that tonight we just had to listen quietly and save our questions for later. With that said, we resumed our story time, listening for the chimes to tell us when to turn the page (thank goodness no one fought over that privilege - Whew!).

I got to checking a little bit . . . these classics are often found on ebay, but of course Amazon.com has a bunch of options too (mostly on CD). I think I’ll be making a few purchases - never know when I’ll fully recover from laryngitis.

What works for you? Check out all kinds of tips and ideas over at Rocks In My Dryer.